Steve Bertrand on Books

Michel Faber talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about The Book of Strange New Things, a fantastical novel set in another world, but a story grounded very much on earth.

With the release of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman, Steve Bertrand on Books gets the lowdown on Harper and Alice Lee with Marja Mills. Her book The Mockingbird Next Door details her time living next door to the Lee sisters in Monroeville, Alabama.

Brad Meltzer talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about the pull of parents, the secrets of Devil’s Island, and Ronald Reagan’s gun. It’s all in Meltzer’s latest political thriller, The President’s Shadow.

Michael Alan Peck is the winner of the 2015 Soon to Be Famous Authors Project. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his award winning novel and the wonder of librarians.

Michael Harvey knows Chicago. The former CBS news producer proves that time and again with his hard-boiled Michael Kelly detective novels. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his latest, The Governor’s Wife. Spoiler alert: The governor is a crook.

Mary Morris talks Jazz, Al Capone, and Chicago in the days of Prohibition with Steve Bertrand on Books. It’s all in her novel The Jazz Palace.

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-born, American comedian who is looks at his life with both comedy and introspection in his memoir I’m Not a Terrorist, But I’ve Played One on TV. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about why he refuses to play a terrorist and why the King of Jordan has his cell number.

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has won the Man Booker Prize and been awarded the O.B.E., has been called one of Britain’s most important living novelists. His latest, The Buried Giant, examines the frailty of collective memory with the story of an elderly post-King Arthur era couple on their way to visit their long lost son. Their memories aren’t altogether reliable. In this interview with Steve Bertrand on Books, Ishiguro says ours aren’t either.

New York Times columnist David Brooks says we’ve lost focus on the virtues that matter most: we worry too much about shallow accomplishments and not enough about the more meaningful behavior that truly makes a difference in the world. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his book The Road to Character.

Erik Larson talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. It was 100 years ago this week that a German U-boat sank the ocean liner with a single torpedo.